Introduction to the Special Issue: How (and Why) Do Witches Fly?http://muse.jhu.edu/article/621356
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The contemporary stereotype of the medieval or early modern European witch has three main features—all inaccurate. She wore a pointed black hat (in fact uncommon in the iconography of witches before the nineteenth-century); she had a black cat familiar (in fact animal familiars are rare outside England, where they were as likely to be dogs or toads or mice or weasels as cats, and might be grey or white or spotted as well as black); and she flew, usually on a broomstick. Ironically this third stereotype, the only one that cannot possibly be true in a world bound by the physical laws of contemporary consensus reality, has the longest pedigree and the strongest grounding in a wide range of medieval and early
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Project MUSE®http://muse.jhu.edu/2016-12-09T00:00:00-05:00http://muse.jhu.edu/journal/387/image/coversmallIntroduction to the Special Issue: How (and Why) Do Witches Fly?2016-06-16text/htmlen-USUniversity of Pennsylvania PressIntroduction to the Special Issue: How (and Why) Do Witches Fly?WitchcraftBlacks2016-06-162016TWOProject MUSE®291132016-12-09T00:00:00-05:002016-06-16Skepticism, Empiricism, and Proof in Gianfrancesco Pico della Mirandola’s Strixhttp://muse.jhu.edu/article/621357
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The flight of witches was one of the most spectacular aspects of the mythos of demonic witchcraft, and one that provoked the most fundamental controversy. It derived from the tenth-century canon Episcopi, which was invoked by both sides in the early modern debate over the reality of witchcraft. Although it never mentioned flight, Episcopi stated quite clearly that women who believed that they traveled about at night on the backs of beasts in a vast horde led by “Diana, the goddess of the pagans” were merely alseep and dreaming.1
However, in the fifteenth-century texts that led to the formalization of the concept of the demonolatrous witch, Canon Episcopi ironically came to figure in arguments for the
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Project MUSE®http://muse.jhu.edu/2016-12-09T00:00:00-05:00http://muse.jhu.edu/journal/387/image/coversmallSkepticism, Empiricism, and Proof in Gianfrancesco Pico della Mirandola’s Strix2016-06-16text/htmlen-USUniversity of Pennsylvania PressSkepticism, Empiricism, and Proof in Gianfrancesco Pico della Mirandola’s StrixWitchcraftBlacks2016-06-162016TWOProject MUSE®1337612016-12-09T00:00:00-05:002016-06-16Babyfat and Belladonna: Witches’ Ointment and the Contestation of Realityhttp://muse.jhu.edu/article/621358
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Many men have written what they never saw, nor did they know the Simples that were the Ingredients, but they set them down from other mens traditions, by an inbred and importunate desire to adde something, so Errors are propagated by succession, and at last grow infinite.1
This article explores an irony of the historiography of witchcraft. In the early modern period in western and central Europe, those who doubted the reality of witches’ flight posited an ointment of soporific herbs (especially night-shades such as henbane and belladonna) to explain witches’ flight as the deluded visions of old women. With transvection and the sabbat thus explained away as the effect of phytochemicals, such women could be
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Project MUSE®http://muse.jhu.edu/2016-12-09T00:00:00-05:00http://muse.jhu.edu/journal/387/image/coversmallBabyfat and Belladonna: Witches’ Ointment and the Contestation of Reality2016-06-16text/htmlen-USUniversity of Pennsylvania PressBabyfat and Belladonna: Witches’ Ointment and the Contestation of RealityWitchcraftBlacks2016-06-162016TWOProject MUSE®3009532016-12-09T00:00:00-05:002016-06-16The Flying Witch: Its Resonance in the Sixteenth-Century Netherlandshttp://muse.jhu.edu/article/621359
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Only two court cases involving flying witches are known from the sixteenth-century Netherlands: one from Amsterdam and the other from Rotterdam, both during the 1560s. The first case concerned Volckgen Harmansdr.,1 who, in 1564, was suspected of having caused the illness of a woman; it was said that during her own illness she had talked about devils and witches in her fever. Taken to the torture chamber, Volckgen was forced to admit that she had wrecked her brother’s ship after a fight with him, just as she had also destroyed two other ships. She was thought to be a “weermaeckster” (weather witch) who had flown with her devil Pollepel (Ladle) to a large meeting of demons and other women high in the air above the
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Project MUSE®http://muse.jhu.edu/2016-12-09T00:00:00-05:00http://muse.jhu.edu/journal/387/image/coversmallThe Flying Witch: Its Resonance in the Sixteenth-Century Netherlands2016-06-16text/htmlen-USUniversity of Pennsylvania PressThe Flying Witch: Its Resonance in the Sixteenth-Century NetherlandsWitchcraftBlacks2016-06-162016TWOProject MUSE®1082272016-12-09T00:00:00-05:002016-06-16Making Time Go Away: Magical Manipulations of Time and Spacehttp://muse.jhu.edu/article/621360
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The process of imagining, seeing, and describing the encounter with the Other, in this case the witch, generates a movement of knowledge that produces and transmits “facts” about magical geographies and those who inhabit them.1 These geographies present the reader with what Ottmar Ette defines as “complex transareal forms of knowing about life and living together.”2 Reading about magical propulsion, most specifically about witch’s flight, allows us to leave our static existence and move into a space that, like the witches’ sabbath, is marked by relentless movement. Flying on broomsticks, riding through the air on a billy goat, or being magically conveyed by the power of satanic ointments or by demons themselves
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Project MUSE®http://muse.jhu.edu/2016-12-09T00:00:00-05:00http://muse.jhu.edu/journal/387/image/coversmallMaking Time Go Away: Magical Manipulations of Time and Space2016-06-16text/htmlen-USUniversity of Pennsylvania PressMaking Time Go Away: Magical Manipulations of Time and SpaceWitchcraftBlacks2016-06-162016TWOProject MUSE®712432016-12-09T00:00:00-05:002016-06-16Afterwordhttp://muse.jhu.edu/article/621361
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These articles represent the latest effort to interpret the late medieval and early modern belief that witches could fly. That belief has a long history in the West. It found expression in folklore, literature, and art long before the period of the witch trials, and the image of a witch flying on a broomstick remains a part of popular culture today. During the period of the witch trials, however, the nature and causes of witch flight became a subject of learned debate.
There were three different ways in which early modern witches were believed capable of flight. The first is that they imagined or dreamed that they flew. Some skeptical demonologists took this position, including those who claimed
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Project MUSE®http://muse.jhu.edu/2016-12-09T00:00:00-05:00http://muse.jhu.edu/journal/387/image/coversmallAfterword2016-06-16text/htmlen-USUniversity of Pennsylvania PressAfterwordWitchcraftBlacks2016-06-162016TWOProject MUSE®319402016-12-09T00:00:00-05:002016-06-16Minerva Airlineshttp://muse.jhu.edu/article/621362
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“Languages of heteroglossia, like mirrors that face each other, each reflecting in its own way a piece, a tiny corner of the world, force us to guess at and grasp for a world behind their mutually reflecting aspects that is broader, more multi-leveled, containing more and varied horizons than would be available to a single language or single narrator.”
“[R]epresentations of human difference, rather than reflecting objective facts, are primarily inventions, interventions and legacies of interventions in the social relationships that they (also) try to depict—by all parties.”
These days, to say that anthropology may be an inherently ironic, perhaps inescapably ironic, enterprise is to carry coals to
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Project MUSE®http://muse.jhu.edu/2016-12-09T00:00:00-05:00http://muse.jhu.edu/journal/387/image/coversmallMinerva Airlines2016-06-16text/htmlen-USUniversity of Pennsylvania PressMinerva AirlinesWitchcraftBlacks2016-06-162016TWOProject MUSE®623912016-12-09T00:00:00-05:002016-06-16Divination and Theurgy in Neoplatonism: Oracles of the Gods by Crystal Addey (review)http://muse.jhu.edu/article/621363
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To study divination, theurgy, and oracles in Neoplatonism is to risk telling in one’s own words a story that has been excellently told before. Hillary Armstrong and John Dillon brought the attention of historians of ancient philosophy to Neoplatonic divination and theurgy. In recent studies, Gregory Shaw, Luc Brisson, John Bussanich, and John Finamore have increased and clarified what we know of the varieties and interactions among theurgicmantic Platonists in late antiquity. What is plain from their studies is that a new academic scale is required for the study of later Platonic divination and theurgy. Addey’s Divination and Theurgy in Neoplatonism: Oracles of the Gods meets just this required sense of
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Project MUSE®http://muse.jhu.edu/2016-12-09T00:00:00-05:00http://muse.jhu.edu/journal/387/image/coversmallDivination and Theurgy in Neoplatonism: Oracles of the Gods by Crystal Addey (review)2016-06-16text/htmlen-USUniversity of Pennsylvania PressDivination and Theurgy in Neoplatonism: Oracles of the Gods by Crystal Addey (review)WitchcraftBlacks2016-06-162016TWOProject MUSE®197262016-12-09T00:00:00-05:002016-06-16The Devil: A New Biography by Philip C. Almond (review)http://muse.jhu.edu/article/621364
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The devil, and the underlying principle of evil he is often thought to signify, are perennially fascinating objects of study. Thriving at the cusp between the demonstrable and the metaphorical, the devil has long attracted the attention of theologians, poets, artists, and story tellers. Philip C. Almond’s biography of the devil in the Western tradition presents a fresh take on the topic, accessible to both researchers and popular audiences alike.
Almond’s knowledge of the material is unimpeachable, his selection of topics and examples is judicious, and his style is engaging and precise. Historical conceptualizations of the devil have been diverse and contradictory. Almond attributes this to a
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Project MUSE®http://muse.jhu.edu/2016-12-09T00:00:00-05:00http://muse.jhu.edu/journal/387/image/coversmallThe Devil: A New Biography by Philip C. Almond (review)2016-06-16text/htmlen-USUniversity of Pennsylvania PressThe Devil: A New Biography by Philip C. Almond (review)WitchcraftBlacks2016-06-162016TWOProject MUSE®173102016-12-09T00:00:00-05:002016-06-16Writing Witch-Hunt Histories: Challenging the Paradigm ed. by Marko Nenonen, Raisa Maria Toivo (review)http://muse.jhu.edu/article/621365
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Marko Nenonen and Raisa Maria Toivo’s edited volume, Writing Witch-Hunt Histories, spans a broad geographic and chronological range and provides a useful overview of the trajectories in historical scholarship about European witch hunts from the nineteenth to twenty-first centuries. The volume reflects the field’s foundation in early modern Europe, with side glances at England and America, and reviews both established and emerging scholarship of areas previously viewed as peripheral to European studies: Finland, Russia, areas of northern Norway populated by the Sami people, and parts of the Iberian world receive particular attention. It ends with a chapter that addresses the pertinence of historical
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Project MUSE®http://muse.jhu.edu/2016-12-09T00:00:00-05:00http://muse.jhu.edu/journal/387/image/coversmallWriting Witch-Hunt Histories: Challenging the Paradigm ed. by Marko Nenonen, Raisa Maria Toivo (review)2016-06-16text/htmlen-USUniversity of Pennsylvania PressWriting Witch-Hunt Histories: Challenging the Paradigm ed. by Marko Nenonen, Raisa Maria Toivo (review)WitchcraftBlacks2016-06-162016TWOProject MUSE®89952016-12-09T00:00:00-05:002016-06-16Magical Transformations on the Early Modern English Stage ed. by Lisa Hopkins, Helen Ostovich (review)http://muse.jhu.edu/article/621366
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From an early age, we are introduced to witches and magic upon the stage—from the first time we boo the wicked witch in Cinderella, or applaud the pumpkin’s transformation. Working on magic in the early modern era we become conversant with magic beyond the fairy tale: Macbeth’s three hags, Faust and his pact, and Prospero’s magical meddling. At first glance, the inclusion of magic upon the stage may seem merely a means to provide entertainment and excitement, or touch of the sinister and a shiver up the spine. Magic upon the stage, however, is part of a wider discourse, enabling commentary upon religion, politics, and cultural stereotypes (to name but a few).
Ostovich and Hopkins’s collection
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Project MUSE®http://muse.jhu.edu/2016-12-09T00:00:00-05:00http://muse.jhu.edu/journal/387/image/coversmallMagical Transformations on the Early Modern English Stage ed. by Lisa Hopkins, Helen Ostovich (review)2016-06-16text/htmlen-USUniversity of Pennsylvania PressMagical Transformations on the Early Modern English Stage ed. by Lisa Hopkins, Helen Ostovich (review)WitchcraftBlacks2016-06-162016TWOProject MUSE®96172016-12-09T00:00:00-05:002016-06-16India and the Occult: The Influence of South Asian Spirituality on Modern Western Occultism by Gordan Djurdjevic (review)http://muse.jhu.edu/article/621367
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The field of esotericism has long been marginalized in religious studies, and within esotericism the study of Asian religions has been even more marginalized. I remember a meeting of the Association for the Study of Esotericism in which the panels on magical traditions from Europe and the Ancient Near East were packed with people, while those that dealt with Asian concepts of magic and the supernatural were relatively deserted. This may perhaps be due to some visceral dislike of Asian religions, a response to the foreign that we see in some of our colleagues in theology. However, it may also be due to the lack of sources on Asian magical traditions and their influence on Western occultism; people may not
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Project MUSE®http://muse.jhu.edu/2016-12-09T00:00:00-05:00http://muse.jhu.edu/journal/387/image/coversmallIndia and the Occult: The Influence of South Asian Spirituality on Modern Western Occultism by Gordan Djurdjevic (review)2016-06-16text/htmlen-USUniversity of Pennsylvania PressIndia and the Occult: The Influence of South Asian Spirituality on Modern Western Occultism by Gordan Djurdjevic (review)WitchcraftBlacks2016-06-162016TWOProject MUSE®95612016-12-09T00:00:00-05:002016-06-16The Empty Seashell: Witchcraft and Doubt on an Indonesian Island by Nils Bubandt (review)http://muse.jhu.edu/article/621368
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If you ever find a nautilus shell on the beach of Buli, a village on the Indonesian island of Halmahera, you’d better not pick it up. Should you find a live nautilus inside it, you would be a gua, a cannibal witch. And even an empty seashell, with its absent, but simultaneously potentially present nautilus, would indicate the dreaded possibility that you may be a gua. This ontologically tricky character of witchcraft and its concomitant epistemological uncertainty are at the core of Nils Bubandt’s remarkable book on witchcraft and doubt, a book that is bound to transfigure anthropological approaches to witchcraft.
Many earlier accounts of witchcraft have argued that witchcraft provides reflections
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Project MUSE®http://muse.jhu.edu/2016-12-09T00:00:00-05:00http://muse.jhu.edu/journal/387/image/coversmallThe Empty Seashell: Witchcraft and Doubt on an Indonesian Island by Nils Bubandt (review)2016-06-16text/htmlen-USUniversity of Pennsylvania PressThe Empty Seashell: Witchcraft and Doubt on an Indonesian Island by Nils Bubandt (review)WitchcraftBlacks2016-06-162016TWOProject MUSE®85682016-12-09T00:00:00-05:002016-06-16